The Ariakan garden was heavy with green that morning, the air damp from spring rain. Rows of herbs stood orderly in their beds, each leaf beaded with water, each stalk bending slightly under the weight. Zoya moved between them with patient hands, touching, trimming, murmuring as though the plants were children who needed coaxing to grow.
Lytavis shadowed her every step. When Zoya knelt, the girl knelt. When she pinched a sprig of aetheril and rolled it carefully between thumb and forefinger, Lytavis copied, her small fingers clumsy but reverent. She held it to her nose, inhaling the soft, airy fragrance, then set it on her tongue with the same solemnity Zoya did.
"Gentle, always gentle," Zoya said, her smile crooked with pride. "Plants are like people. Some are best handled softly."
Lytavis nodded, though her lips puckered at the herb's bitter aftertaste. She copied again when her mother reached for foxflower, crushing the leaves between her palms until the sharp scent rose. Together they bent over the garden, whispering uses for each herb as if they were secrets shared only between them.
By the time the sun tilted higher, Lytavis's skirts were stained with soil, her hands smelled of mint and foxflower, and her eyes gleamed with the satisfaction of learning something worth keeping.
In the afternoon, Lucien's study smelled not of herbs but of parchment and ink. He unrolled a long scroll across his desk, its surface inked with curving lines that met and parted like streams of water. His hand rested near one of the bolder marks, a thick thread of blue.
"Do you see this line, Lytavis?" he asked, his voice as steady as the ink strokes. "This is a leyline. They run beneath the land like rivers, carrying magic instead of water."
Her eyes widened, tracing the arc of the line until it passed directly under the careful mark for their home. "It goes right through us," she whispered.
"Under us," Lucien corrected with a faint smile. "Right beneath our feet."
Before he could say more, Lytavis darted from the study, bare feet pattering across the polished floors and out into the sunlight. Lucien followed at a slower pace, amusement pulling at the corners of his mouth.
She was already kneeling by the garden wall when he reached her, palms pressed flat to the earth as if she could feel the current below. Lucien crouched beside her and pointed toward a crack between the stones. There, clustered low to the ground, grew a scatter of mana crystals, small but bright as fallen stars.
Lytavis gasped. The crystals caught the light in facets of violet and blue, glowing faintly in the shadows of the wall. She reached toward them, not touching, only staring, as though afraid the sight might vanish.
"They are the visible heart of the line," Lucien said softly. "A reminder of what flows beneath us. Most never see them so near their homes."
Her hand hovered, trembling with wonder. "Does it… hum?" she asked.
Lucien tilted his head. He had long grown used to the quiet vibration that seemed to sing at the edge of perception. "Yes, Little Star" he said at last. "It hums."
Lytavis's face lit, the way it did when Zoya told her a plant's name. She leaned closer, eyes wide, listening as though the earth itself had whispered her name.
Notes in the Margin - Lucien Ariakan
Today she saw the leyline. I have traced them for millennia, charted their paths across parchment, but I have never watched anyone look at them as she did. She did not see threads of power or the promise of study. She saw wonder. She said it hummed, and I believe she heard it more clearly than I ever could. I begin to think the earth speaks to her in a tongue she was born knowing, and all my ink and scrolls are but a translation that will never catch its true sound.